Geographies: Pittsburgh

When you sign up for Startup Weekend, you start to dream. When you’re in the thick of building a business in a weekend, you start to believe the dream could become a reality. If you keep at it years later, the dream will become a reality.

It all starts during Friday night pitches. The days and months leading up to Startup Weekend are exciting and a bit nerve-racking. What if… is a question that comes to mind often. What if no one likes my idea? What if I don’t get along with my team? What if we lose?

Here are a few more possibilities: What if we win? What if I love my team? What if this event changes everything for me?

These are extreme examples, and the team of Startup Weekend Pittsburgh: Women’s Edition organizers have experienced the highs and lows of Startup Weekend. It’s an all-encompassing event built on teamwork, competition, and dreams. If you’ve ever wanted to take the leap to start a company, we’re here to dream with you. It starts with a pitch.

I’ve participated in many hackathons — both as a marketer and as a developer. I’ve found that every person who participates in Startup Weekend (SUW) is wanted but the most difficult segment to recruit are developers.

A little about myself: I learned to code in 2013 and made the career switch from marketer to developer. It is incredibly empowering to think up an idea and to be able to build it yourself. Developers at Startup Weekend often make a big impact because when they pitch an idea, it is implied that it is technically feasible and it is open for collaboration with non-technical/designer participants.

Developers considering signing up for Startup Weekend should consider all of the great benefits and opportunities that it presents:

Found a new API you’ve been meaning to tinker with? Pitch it!

Been dabbling in a new language that you’d love to try out? This is a great opportunity to build a real app with it (For me: this is Elm and Haskell).

Know a ton of developers but not the rest of the startup community? Now’s your chance.

Looking for a new job and want to meet people who can connect you with one? This is especially important for junior developers.

Need to round out your portfolio and prove that you have management skills? Leading a team at SUW is great experience.

Love delicious food and prizes? The price of the ticket pales to all of the great swag and local food and coffee you get to enjoy all weekend.

Been curious about learning about the business and design side of things? The knowledge transfer at Startup Weekend is one the best parts of the weekend. I often encourage developers to not get boxed into coding only.

For my event specifically (Startup Weekend Pittsburgh: Women’s Edition), want to meet other kickass women in our community? Find a mentor or a co-founder? SUW is the place.

Participating as a developer is not a ploy to get free work from talented programmers. Rather, it is a way for you to assist another entrepreneur in bringing her idea to fruition or find the amazing team that will turn your venture into reality.

We’re recruiting developers, designers and business folk to join us on March 18th – 20th, 2016 at Alphalab for Startup Weekend Pittsburgh: Women’s Edition. Sign up here and I will see you there!

I always wanted to start a company. And once I saw the power of the internet, I wanted to start an internet company. But I didn’t know if it was possible.

When I was in school, there weren’t any entrepreneurship classes or programs. Even in college, I don’t remember anyone talking about starting companies. I graduated from college in 2006, so Facebook was a platform that we used on campus. But the idea that we could start an internet company that could impact the world wasn’t talked about. Everyone was downloading music for free, and I think we all somehow thought that one day the endless supply of free music would go away. The authorities would take over. Just like we weren’t allowed to cite Wikipedia as a legitimate source in a school paper, nothing on the internet was legitimized yet.

After I graduated, I was completely lost. I spent all of my time and energy trying to graduate on time to avoid more school loans that I never thought about a career. Originally I went to college thinking I would go to law school immediately after graduating, but I already felt the overwhelming debt burden before graduating, and I read about the increasing number of law school grads without job opportunities. I also didn’t want to decide my professional fate at the age of twenty-two. I wanted to try my hand at starting a company. But I didn’t know if it was possible.

So I searched in bookstores for answers. Almost every day. One day I came across a book called “Founders at Work” by Jessica Livingston. I didn’t have much money, so I think I just read the book in the bookstore. I remember that she interviewed a lot of men about starting internet companies. I thought to myself, “that sounds like the exact thing I want to do with my life.” And I remember something in the book about starting a class or program in Boston for people that want to start internet companies. And I thought, “probably for MIT or Stanford grads.” Not for a girl from Pittsburgh. I put the book back on the shelf.

I went to networking events – every networking event I could find. Men in suits hit on me occasionally. I thought to myself, “I want to start a company, not find a date.” Again, I felt lost.

I spent so much time in bookstores that I ended up working for a bookstore chain for four years. During that time, I heard about a local accelerator program for internet companies called AlphaLab run by Innovation Works. That sounded really interesting. But I reminded myself that I had a Political Science degree and worked at a bookstore. I put the idea out of my head.

Around the time Borders books closed, I realized working for a bookstore chain was not a longterm solution to my aimless professional existence. I quit and started blogging about the power of the internet and social media. I applied to a few local startups, not knowing how to frame my “expertise” in the job interview. Some companies did not respond. Some companies interviewed me for customer service type roles. I cringe when I think about those interviews. I was so nervous, and I didn’t get the job, anywhere.

Next thing I knew, I was offered a job at an education company. I needed the money. The people seemed nice. I took the job. Many days I sat in my car at lunchtime reading tweets. I followed people in the startup world. I didn’t really talk to them, but I followed them. And one day I came across something called “Startup Weekend Pittsburgh.” I signed up immediately. I didn’t even have to think about it. Someone was putting on an event where you start companies, and I could sign up. HOLY S#&%, I thought to myself.

Since then, I’ve participated in four Startup Weekend Pittsburgh events. I was on the first place team at two events. I was on the second place team at one event. And I’m a proud AlphaLab alum.

I don’t know how to explain what Startup Weekend means to me. This is the first time I’m really sharing my experience on the internet, and obviously I’m simplifying it for the sake of brevity. But this post is to say that I don’t feel lost anymore. Startup Weekend showed me a way. It showed me that a girl from Pittsburgh with a Political Science degree and a confusing work history can start an internet company – several, actually.

It’s not to say that it’s easy, because it’s not. There are new challenges every day. But it’s possible. I want you to know that it’s possible.

If you buy a ticket to participate at Startup Weekend Pittsburgh Women, I will do everything in my power to instill in you the idea that anything is possible, and the Startup Weekend Pittsburgh community is here to help you make it happen. Please join us if you have a dream of starting a company.

Just under one month to go until StartupWeekend Civic! Over at Idea Foundry we’re always excited to meet new ideas and the people behind them. So when we heard that Startup Weekend Pittsburgh was holding a special edition focused solely on Civic Innovation, we got psyched!

Why are we so thrilled to be part of Startup Weekend Civic? Here at Idea Foundry through our Social Enterprise sector, we have an explicit focus on supporting businesses innovating to benefit the common good, for people, planet, and profit. We’re energized seeing so many Pittsburghers who are passionate about solving the big, systemic problems that real people in our region face. Because for us, that is what social enterprise is all about.

So what is civic innovation to us? How is it linked to social enterprise, and why is that link significant?

To us, civic innovation means enabling citizens to examine the core public sector issues we all experience everyday. It could be a lack of convenient public transportation that moves us quickly from home to job or school and back; rising rates of obesity and other life-style related illnesses; or the non-level playing field that exists for free access to information and knowledge resources: Civic Innovation is coming up with disruptive, game-changing solutions to those problems. This could mean developing more expansive and effective public transportation systems that include mass transit as well as bike and ride share infrastructure; creating new land use policies that lead to more green space where people can relax, work, and play; or introducing technology that promotes universal public wifi, which could lead to more engaged, empowered citizens.

Meanwhile, social enterprise as we define it at Idea Foundry is a completely new business model that drives social change and supports a healthy planet and healthy communities while generating profit and financial sustainability. These for-profit enterprises are developing and applying innovative, disruptive solutions that address huge social or environmental problems while creating profit and scalable economic opportunity. Whether addressing poor air or water quality, low access to fresh, healthy foods, or our ability to develop sustainable and renewable fuels, our social entrepreneurs are reinventing the principles of for-profit business to solve and prevent environmental and social problems in market-driven ways, while adding economic value to all involved stakeholders.

As a society, our ability to address these huge, systemic social and environmental challenges matters, because these issues affect the way we live with one another, interact with the environment around us, as well as our overall quality of life. A healthy, functioning city cares for people and empowers them to make changes. This can make everyone happier, healthier, and more prosperous as a whole. An unhealthy civic environment benefits only a small percentage disproportionately at the expense of many, creates unequal opportunity and wellbeing only for the few, and brings us all down as a result. This leads to a split society, and leaves people powerless to make meaningful changes.

The relative strength or weakness of our civic structure also affects much more than our individual livelihoods, it impacts the big picture. It affects the way we perform as a holistic society, and measures our relative strength and resilience as a city, region, individual community, or neighborhood. It determines our collective wellbeing, our global competiveness as an equitable, livable city, as well as our ability to attract new people to the region who can help propel our ever-evolving city forward.

For us at Idea Foundry, this links to the work we do to support for-profit social entrepreneurs, because social enterprise is all about making life better for the people who really need it. It’s about dreaming up scalable, impactful, and market-based solutions to the world’s biggest problems. It’s about opening up new markets by delivering products and services to people who have been left behind and introducing solutions where they’ve never been available. It’s tackling problems that don’t seem to have answers, at least ones that are adequate, and asking, how can I approach this differently, in a new and meaningful way? How can I create a business that is responsible and responsive to all stakeholders, from employees and shareholders, to suppliers, customers, and the natural environment, in a way that is financially viable and economically sustainable?

We are helping to generate the next wave of triple bottom line companies creating sustainable economic opportunity in Western Pennsylvania and measurable social change locally and globally, by helping social entrepreneurs evaluate market opportunities and assess their ability to innovate in the marketplace. We do this because we believe business for good is the future.

By providing support to entrepreneurs who have big ideas to change the world through business, we’re helping solve those critical social and environmental challenges that will define our success for the generations that come after us. And we know that as civic innovators, that is your goal too.

If you think you have a great solution to increase the common good, we can’t wait to see what you come up with in this year’s Startup Weekend Civic Pittsburgh, and to support you through the process after the weekend is over. Sign up today. We wish you the best of luck, and happy innovating!

As one of the proud community leaders of Startup Weekend Pittsburgh, I believe that our events bring out the best in our community. We’re the ones who teach others to stand at the edge and leap head-on into the unknown. We encourage people to listen to our city’s problems, create solutions, and iterate them if they don’t work out.

We’re the ones who create a community that’s “No Talk. All Action.”

However, I think we sometimes get a little caught up in the glory of the startup world and forget about the pressing needs that are surround us at all times. Pittsburgh’s certainly a city on the rise, but it’s a city with a lot of work to do as well.

All proceeds go entirely to 412 Food Rescue, a non-profit initiative to reuse unsellable food and convert them into healthy, delicious meals for our community’s hungry. The event will take place at The Livermore in East Liberty on July 25th from 7pm to midnight.

Here are 7 figures that motivate our entrepreneurial efforts to curb this very serious problem (facts and figures mostly extracted from Feeding America):

14.4%

That’s the percent of people who live in Allegheny County who are “food insecure,” or are unable to feed themselves adequately. That seems small, but here’s another number.

176,360

The number of people who are food insecure in Allegheny County. You could almost fill Heinz Stadium three times over with that many people.

Among them…

43,090

How many children are food insecure in Allegheny County. That’s greater than the capacity of PNC Park.

$2.86

How much an average healthy meal costs in our region.

$89,223,000

How much it would cost to eradicate hunger in Allegheny County every year.

1

The number of people it takes to make a difference.

As an entrepreneur and a community organizer, I am convinced of the power of a single individual to make a huge difference in their community. This is not idealism – such impacts happen all the time. After all…

Prof. von Ahn also opened up about his struggles as an entrepreneurship – the nightmares of product, the perpetual campaign of “gamification,” and the immense complexity in providing a service for each language.

There’s nothing greater than when a local startup rock star maintains a sense of humility. Thank you, Prof. von Ahn!

2. That moment when Expii’s Po-Shen Loh made the entire crowd gasp in awe.

Po-Shen Loh dazzles the crowd with his brilliance and energy. Photo courtesy of Ben Matzke Photos.

I know it seems silly that I compared myself to Steve Jobs when he first saw Steve Wozniak’s PC and operating system for the first time, but I hope you all understand that feeling now.

When Professor Loh showed us all “The Map” – that seemingly endless web of knowledge that continually expands as people actively contribute to Expii via “colossal collaboration” – the entire room was floored.

Prof. Loh is just one of many in a community of game changers, and the best part: they’re more excited to meet YOU. Expii is currently live and ready for you to contribute.

3. A mother and son competed AGAINST each other (and, somehow, both won)I did not discover this until well into the competition, but participants Wesley and her son Porter joined different teams: Project Playground and The Wrinkled Brain Project. Throughout, there was nothing but love and respect – sometimes a rare sight at an intense competition like Startup Weekend.

Mother-son bonding via intense weekend-long startup competition.

Although Mom ended up placing first in the competition, Porter was the real star of the event. This Startup Weekend featured the first “Reaping” ever – a sacrifice of one participant to entertain the other participants and maintain social order.

Some of the team made a snowman out in front. We decided to name it “Gusky” after Norton Gusky, a huge advocate in the Pittsburgh education community and the first person to buy a ticket at our event. Unfortunately, he fell ill and couldn’t attend, so we hope that this snowman was a fitting tribute.

Our team posting with Gusky the Snowman. Photo courtesy of Ben Matzke Photos.

Convinced yet that there might be a higher power involved? Perhaps, but I’m more inclined to think it begins with this validated fact:

Education is a big deal in Pittsburgh, and entrepreneurship is a great way to stimulate its progress.

It was too easy to recruit the right organizers and volunteers – I already knew the most passionate, committed, trustworthy, and hardworking people in town.

We’re having no fun. No fun at all. Photo courtesy of Ben Matzke Photos.

We really didn’t have any trouble finding the right judges – we knew we wanted a teenage entrepreneur, three prominent women in educational technology, and a veteran in Pittsburgh school policy and philanthropy. Mission accomplished.

ORGANIZE – this will be the last time I organize an event for a while, for I have been plucked up by UP Global, the parent organization of Startup Weekend and many other excellent programming. It’s time for me to “pass the beaker,” and it’s time for you to step up.

After all, you’re now part of a big family, and we’re excited to have you.

Pretty surreal, isn’t it?

Lee Ngo is the Regional Manager of the US East Coast for UP Global and the lead organizer of Startup Weekend Education Pittsburgh. Many of the photos in this post were provided generously by Ben Matzke Photos, all rights reserved.

The teams have formed and the heart of Startup Weekend Education Pittsburgh is officially underway! If you’re looking for a little more information on the game plan for Saturday and some tips and insights, this post is for you.

As always, if you need anything, find an organizer or volunteer, or tweet at us: https://twitter.com/swedupgh. Don’t forget to use the hashtag #SWeduPGH! And don’t be shy! We’ve all done this before and know what you’re going through.

If you’re getting your team established on social media, be sure to let us know and we’ll spread the word. Also request any team needs on Twitter and we will blast it out through social.

Here are the teams so far. We know your name and idea will fluctuate throughout the weekend so let us know of updates!

emrj: online platform to connect students with companies for job shadows

The Wrinkled Brain Project: connect students with scientists to encourage deep thinking in science labs

Imaginate: interactive storytelling to encourage kids to read

Every Penny Counts: kids get rewarded with pennies for answering questions during class

Field Trip: making botany more real-world interactive through teacher-directed initiatives

Root Ed: connecting college mentors with high school students

ClassR: collaboration platform for students in the same class working on projects together

Lunchtime: summer lunches for kids through a non-profit food truck

Pittsburgh Thriving Index: a dynamic real-time dashboard with multidimensional data that reframes education with access points for all

E-lectern: build a better interface for online teaching

The Project Playground: app to give teachers insights on student projects, straight from the kids

Code Trail: helping young kids learn to code through gamification

For Saturday:

ECS will open at 9am! Come grab breakfast in the cafeteria thanks to Square Cafe then get to work.

Hopefully you had a successful brain dump Friday evening so you can hit the ground running on Saturday. Be sure to do lots of research, keep the MVP model in mind and take advantage of the amazing mentors coming in who have volunteered their time. This is when you want to really consider your market and get validation.

Assign roles and tasks to help get everything done. Be agile– know it will be a rollercoaster but that’s ok. And most importantly, have fun!

Mentors will be in from 10am-5pm. For special requests, email: pittsburghedu@startupweekend.org.

Tips: prioritize what your team needs guidance on and spend as much time with those mentors.

List out questions: Time is limited with mentors so make sure you use it wisely.

Be humble and open-minded: Remember, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Be upfront and direct: If you need to pass on a mentor to digest and implement information, let them know.

After lunch from Mad Mex, we’ll be doing a status report where you’ll update us on your progress and any needs you have. Remember, Startup Weekend is about community and collaboration. Teams helping each other out is highly encouraged!

Mentors will be here until 5 pm, and Saturday evening is when you’ll have to start considering how your pitch will go. Volunteers are here to help if this is new to you! We’ll also be sending around the judging criteria in an email to help guide you.

Win 10 is catering dinner and we’ll have an ice cream social from Dream Cream later in the evening. Things can get intense on Saturday but don’t forget to take an occasional break to clear your head and enjoy all the event has to offer.

The following is a guest post from Norton Gusky – Educational Technology Broker and education photo documentarian.

The Maker Space is about tinkering, building, creating, designing, but what’s the next step? According to Jerry Cozewith, the Executive Director of Entrepreneuring Youth (EY), a non-profit located in Pittsburgh, Pennsyvania, the next step is taking the creativity and innovation of the Maker Space into the world of student run-businesses.

One of the great success stories for EY is Shawn, a former Manchester Academic Charter School (MACS) student who started out as a shy young man who would not even look at you in the face. Shawn was a middle school student in the iOWN program, an entrepreneurial program coordinated by EY at MACS. Jerry tells the story about first meeting Shawn and his handshake was limp and his voice was almost inaudible. Today Shawn is a high school entrepreneur with his own bakery business. He had an interest in baking. EY gave him the supports and experiences to turn that interest into a passion that was not just about making food, but creating a system to have a business that turned a profit within two years. When you meet Shawn today he shakes your hand with a firm grip and tells you why you should purchase his pastries.

Jerry sees MACS as one of the best examples of how EY grows young people, taking them from where they are and giving them the confidence and chutzpuh to say, “Can you help me?” It’s that ability to realize that you need a mentor, a guide, that really separates the kids in EY from their peers. The talent to ask good questions leads to innovative solutions.

According to the Entrepreneuring Youth website: “We help young people start and operate businesses as a way to guide them toward their own path to success after high school. When young people run businesses of their own creation, they bloom with newfound confidence. They discover talents which were once hidden. They think of themselves as “owners” and “presidents.” Young people who become young entrepreneurs realize the value of creating (rather than waiting) for opportunities.”

According to one of the young entrepreneurs featured in a promotional video, EY gave her a voice. “… I could stand up before all of these people and say things that were on mind.”

Jerry focuses on the concept of “self-efficacy” as the key for success. It’s about empowering youth. It’s not just that kids learn the value of owning a business; it’s more about the growth of young men and women who have the tools and awareness that will make them successful wherever they travel or seek to make their imprint.

Today EY is creating success stories throughout the Pittsburgh region with a focus on the under-privileged, the under-served youth. Jerry shared a story about a recent event EY sponsored at the Oxford Center, a major commercial center in Downtown Pittsburgh. Initially there were only four parents signed up from the Hilltop project where EY partners with the YMCA. Jerry investigated and discovered that the parents did not have transportation and didn’t know how to travel to the Downtown destination. EY then rented a bus and over 75 adults came down from the “mountain” to see the world of Downtown youth commerce. EY empowered the parents to become supporters for their young entrepreneurs.

According to Jerry when you first looked at the display at Oxford Center display of student businesess it appeared to be a typical array of goods, but when you met the young people behind each business, you realized that there was something special happening. You knew that these young people had taken the first steps to success in the adult world. They knew how to communicate, how to sell themselves. They had confidence in themselves.

It’s the reason why we need more events like Startup Weekend EDU. We need to breed that entrepreneurial spirit where young people learn to network and pitch their ideas, to take risks, and learn by their initial mistakes and failures so they discern the value of the iterative process inherent in all “making” activities.

With so many projects happening, so much money being spent, and so little time, it seems important (for my personal clarity) to take a moment and try to summarize exactly what we are all building towards, or should be. It’s what I’m trying to build, some way or another, over the next 10 years. I want to describe this mythical unicorn in a single sentence. The mythical unicorn is: An open, decentralized platform on which communities of people can create, curate, and browse an expansive map of local learningopportunities and digital resources that, as they learn, form a personal archive of proven skills and experiences. Okay, that’s it. The following is a glossary where I do my favorite thing and parse the sentence.

open

When I say “open”, I refer as much to the process of building the unicorn as the final product itself. Yes, this platform needs to be open-sourced and fully accessible and built to be shared, but even more urgent is the need to build this collaboratively out in the open. If we are going to build this, we need to collaborate, not duplicate. Too much of the important work happening in this space is siloed or poorly documented. Resources are limited and the goal is huge.

decentralized

I’m not quite sure how to best build this in a decentralized way, but I’m convinced of its necessity. A decentralized platform is more equitable, does not limit user agency, and is less subject to problematic issues of privacy and control, etc. See the other values of the indieweb for inspiration. I would love to hear ideas and start a discussion on how we map and curate the wealth of the world’s learning resources in a decentralized framework. Maybe the answer is some sort of hybrid in which resource data is held centrally, but available to a federation of regional hubs… These hubs consist of thousands of learners who each have their own private webspace where they are hosting their personal learning archive and sharing out as they see fit… …Like we all have our own digital bookshelves, except they are knowledge maps and they are all connected … !? Maybe? Lots to think about. My thoughts are weak in this area.

communities

Okay, I lied. There are actually two unicorns. That’s right, two mythical creatures. And the second is actually more important: the real communities of people and places that actually use this platform and its resources. These learning communities exist already in our schools and workplaces around specific majors or careers, but they should increasingly form organically around locally important subjects and problems. Projects like City of Learning and others are building frameworks in which a learner’s path is not driven by the limitations of their schools, but by their interests. If we start to use the entire city (or region + internet) as our campus, we can begin to think of learning beyond single institutions. If this happens, we will have an exciting moment to consider what learning communities could look like in “the real world”, outside of the peer-driven, often monocultural communities of our schools. Thoreau says that “we are all schoolmasters and our schoolhouse is the universe.” What do learning communities look like if learning moves in this direction? Meetups on steroids?

curate

Perhaps the hardest part of all of this is to curate all the resources; it’s what a lot of smart people have been talking about as the next Herculean task for us denizens of the internet. We’ve created all this stuff, now let’s sort it all out and map it into a beautiful and usable network of learning resources. Google’s Director of Technology, Craig Silverstein admits the limitations of current technology: “My guess is about 300 years until computers are as good as, say, your local reference library in doing search, but we can make slow and steady progress, and maybe one day we’ll get there.” We need today’s librarians not to work as functional administrators of content, but as creative curators who help define what is best and sort out the complex relationships of resources. They have to do the powerful acts that Google cannot and may never be fully able to do. Just as the dark age monks before them, we desperately need librarians to protect, curate and hold aloft worthwhile knowledge. In the face of the barbarian hoards they were necessary because of the dearth of texts. Today it is the opposite. We need librarians as lighthouses amidst the floods of available information.

expansive map

The aggregate of this work done by librarians, content experts, and regular humans will be an expansive map that organizes all of the best learning resources and their relationships. Really, all of us have already been drafted into this work as curators and librarians. If the map could be made expansive enough, a 4th grader playing with legos who just came home from a field trip at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater could visualize every step along the way to mastery in the field of architecture. And they could start right then. This pre-requisite progress mapping helps to further drive home the importance of core skills like mathematics that, too often, feel disconnected from more direct, work-related pursuits. “Oh, so if I want to be an architect I need to master Trigonometry and Physics…and…” Rendering of Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X The magic of the “skill tree” is best captured and named in some of the most intricate video games. The Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X provides the player with a way to visualize a series of decisions for their development. Where should you start on the grid? Which direction should you go? If you choose a certain skill set, what areas are you forsaking? This sort of cost-benefit analysis that recognizes the opportunity cost implicit in all education is a powerful act that, while common in games, usually occurs with less intention and less tools in the development of real persons.

local and digital

On this map, there will be two primary types of content: local learning opportunities and digital resources. One exciting outcome of this would be the deconstructing of online courses. Instead of a self-contained silo of learning content, the “MOOC” could be broken apart into separate nodes of content with mapped relationships. The online “course” could become a specific pathway on the expansive map that is supported by an expert and a community of learners. Courses will fade into the background and function as a curatorial (and relational) layer on top of the great resources being created by experts. After all, we’ve always known that resources like Hack Design have always been better than anything on Coursera. The really successful “ed.tech” platform will be the one that recognizes that technology is inherently neutral and that, when it comes to engaging a learner, relationships and learning communities will always trump content distribution and teaching machines. The platform must do this by taking on the important, but very complex job of pulling together both the digital resources and the entire social structure of education: workshops, volunteering, mentors, games, apprenticeships, courses, meetups, etc. etc. etc.

portfolio

Imagine you are in some magical library of the future browsing poetry books in the stacks. Imagine that, when in those same poetry “stacks”, you could see instantly, what “books” you had read, what poems you liked or wrote about, and a portfolio of your own poems that resulted from your study. The library becomes more than a reservoir of content, but a data and planning center for the development of your mind. Imagine if such a map existed in three (four? fifty?) dimensions and included all subjects, displaying the process of development and connections between nodes. Again, some nodes could be whole texts, while others could be short sections on “This is how you learn X”, or an in-person local workshop. Progress on a Khan Academy Knowledge Map Within this knowledge map, you will have the ability to plan courses of study, follow courses that others have crafted, or just learn everything within a certain content area. Perhaps most excitingly, long-time students will be able to look back at their progress over many years and see a serious portfolio of everything they have ever read, watched, created, and learned. Every assignment, quiz, and essay could be looked at individually, or in aggregate to give students a picture of their personal development thus far. If used to its fullest potential, a student would be able to see the lifelong progression of their talents in a snap-shot and the path they took to get there. They could then curate their personal portfolio and knowledge map and share it with the public as part of their CV or application for schools.

proven

This, of course, brings us to just exactly how the public knows that your map contains proven skills and knowledge. The answer lies in some sort of data-rich external endorsement related to your learning experiences. This data-rich credential has, to date, most capably taken the form of digital badges. These badges can provide the data needed to help learners find their way to their next learning experience, to make their personal portfolio substantive, and to provide the credentials necessary for the public to trust and properly value that portfolio. thoughts? what’s your unicorn?

The following is a guest post from Mike Hruska, President and CEO of Platinum Sponsor Problem Solutions.

Educational Technology (ed tech) has the largest opportunity to radically reshape our world. Engaging students and employees along the continuum of learning experiences has the ability to impact innovation and economic growth. The most important thing that we can do through ed tech is enable teachers to be great teachers and students to be great students as lifelong learners. We can do this by connecting people with the right experiences at the right time and with connecting people with the right people at the right time.

Funding is flowing into ed tech like never before. Massive investments by venture capitalists continue to add to the over $1 Billion of venture capital that has been invested in ed tech up to 2012. A recent single investment of $103 Million in Lynda.com earlier this month is the largest venture round in ed tech history. That’s big – and is going to change the world.

We are excited about ed tech and our team at Problem Solutions has been working in learning and educational technology on specifications, standards, products, and new technologies for 15 years.

We have also helped existing and new companies dream and deliver new learning technologies and build award winning products like the recent Brandon Hall Gold award winner Trek.

We are excited about the possibilities that ed tech offers. We are lucky to build useful and awesome things in this space with great people. These tools and technologies have helped the community to grow and will continue to impact it moving ahead.

Why do we do this? Because the place where technology and education intersect has the largest ability to impact the world in positive ways.

We are looking forward to Startup Weekend Education so we can begin to grow innovative ed tech companies in Pittsburgh. What are you going to build to change the world?